The original Green Day seeing a comeback in the US
Remember those tree-hugging hippies of the 60s and 70s? You know, free-thinking, long-haired crazies that first preached the need to use canvas instead of plastic bags. The first to warn about carbon emissions. The first to buy organic. Well, they’re back. Only with nicer haircuts and business degrees.
Earth Day had its big debut back in the Spring of 1970. As the story goes, Senator Gaylord Nelson of Wisconsin proposed that there should be a nationwide grassroots demonstration on the environment. After all, protests were all the rage then. Each year saw the movement grow into an annual phenomenon.
But by the turn of the century, thanks in large part to having many ‘oil men’ in political power, the fight for the environment kinda lost it’s luster in the American media. If you recall the campaign leading up to the 2000 Presidential debacle, even the Earth’s number one fan Al Gore hardly talked about. Pollution, ozone and the rest were swept away for not being quite ‘sexy’ enough for the limelight.
I’m sure Mr. Gore is sorry for that tactical miscall and politicians this election year are playing with the environment squarely in their sites. And while Earth Day has remained big worldwide, it is just in the last year or so that Americans have once again embraced our lovely planet. For that we probably can thank a backlash against those aforementioned ‘oil men’ and ever rising energy prices.
Sure I’d love for Earth Day and the Green movement to be more about tree-hugging hippies saving spotted owls than people saving money, but telling people to stop using plastic bags because they kill fish and foul while clogging up our ecosystem just doesn’t cut it. Then again, if you say that the unnecessary manufacturing of this bags is a factor to rising fuel costs, you’ll see more and more people carrying canvas.
If you really think about it, the fact that business is now steering the needed changes to the environment makes perfect sense. We live in a capitalist country and the mighty (well, not so mighty right now…) dollar has always decided our fate. And why is this all coming together now? It’s because technology, philosophy and economy have finally converged to a point where saving the Earth now fit snuggly into a business plan along with profit and loss.
Of course we still have a ways to go so ‘organic’ and ‘earth friendly’ are not synonymous with ‘expensive’ and ‘hard to find’, but we’re getting there.
